Cincinnati Recruiting, Connecticut Recruiting, Georgetown Recruiting, Louisville Recruiting, Marquette Recruiting, Providence Recruiting, Rutgers Recruiting, Seton Hall Recruiting, St. John's Recruiting, Syracuse Recruiting, West Virginia Recruiting, Zach Smart

SATURDAY AT THE BIG APPLE BASKETBALL INVITATIONAL

by Zach Smart

NEW YORK—The sixth annual Big Apple Basketball High School Invitational got underway on Saturday at Baruch College with five high-powered match-ups for hoops junkies. Jason Curry and his tremendous staff at Big Apple Basketball once again hit a winner with this year’s event, which wraps up on Monday with four more games. Stay tuned right here for more coverage…Here is the rundown from Saturday’s exciting action:

Notre Dame Prep 100, APEX Academy 69:Throughout his high school career, Sean Kilpatrick has been recognized for being a prolific scorer. The Cincinnati-commit staked his claim as one of the top scorers in New York State during his four year stay at White Plains High School. His major upside has always been his ability to score in clusters, knife through defenses, hit from the outside, and barrel to the bucket.

He also has a penchant for dizzying opponents off the dribble with an arsenal of one-on-one moves.

For 26 minutes Saturday, Kilpatrick’s scoring wasn’t the main aspect of his game that stood out. It was his harassing defense and pin-point passing that helped Notre Dame Prep cruise to a 100-69 mauling of Apex at the ARC arena of Baruch College.

Kilpatrick scored a game-high 21 points, doled out seven assists, and collected four steals in a game that saw Prep’s suffocating defense lead to countless fast break opportunities. Apex never recovered from a shaky first half, and their porous defense allowed four prep players to finish in double-figures.

Kilpatrick was named game MVP, during the second contest of the sixth annual Big Apple Basketball Invitational.

He found the open man early and often, drawing double teams and kicking it out to teammates. He found teammates on his way to the basket. He rifled in passes from beyond the arc. All in all, he kept the defense off balance and shouldered the role of playmaker in one of the finest performances of his post-graduate career.

“That’s not just today you see that from Sean,” said Notre Dame coach Ryan Hurd.

“Sean’s made a concentrated effort this year on getting everybody involved. That’s why, I think more so than ever at this level, we have a group of guys that take a little bit of pleasure in the other kids being successful. That starts with Sean, with the ability to get to the rim and draw people and willing to give the ball up.”

The pleasure was all Kilpatrick’s. He found Providence-bound guard Johnnie Lacy (17 points) and James Southerland, a Syracuse-commit, (15 points) on the receiving end, as Prep shot a blistering 71 percent from the floor in the second half.

Kilpatrick, who sported a fresh Bearcats shooting shirt after receiving his trophy, said it was just a matter of defense creating offense.

“Coach told us to come in and play defense,” said Kilpatrick. “We play defense and they can’t stay in the game with us, because we have too much talent. That was the whole key of the game. If we play defense then it will turn into buckets.”

Has his augmented passing role helped prepare him for the next level?

“I have to go into Cincinnati and do my job as a scorer. I guess everything else will take care of itself. Coach (Mick) Cronin just told me to basically focus on this year, with Prep. I think it’s really preparing me for Cincinnati, but right now I’m just focusing on what I can do to help this team win.”

Kilpatrick, whose academic issues kept him from jumping to a Big East school (St. John’s had been in pursuit of the 6-3 guard/forward throughout his senior year) said that school is going well and his grades are coming along.

Apex looked dreadful, committing a torrent of turnovers and not even hustling back on defense. A high-rising dunk by Kilpatrick pumped the lead to 69-36, and Prep continued to jump out in transition. They found themselves all alone for a sexy date with the basket.

Sure enough, the game got out of hand. Prep resembled more of an And 1 mixtape, getting flashy and soaring in for dunks as the opposition was, well…defenseless.

Notre Dame’s high-powered offense got rolling early. Southerland got free for an easy lay-in (off a cross-court pass from Lacy) and Kilpatrick bagged a three that gave Prep an 18-5 lead in the first quarter.

Moments later, Lacy swished a trey, jacking the lead up to 25-11. A wild sequence would follow, as Kilpatrick, Southerland, and Lacy slammed home three straight fast break dunks. This ballooned Preps lead to 31-13 and the game was over before the second half began.

“That got us jump-started,” said the spindly 6-foot-7 Southerland, sporting an Albany City Rocks AAU jacket. “We were practicing all week because we just came back from (school) vacation. We were doing well, I think we kind of need to get back our energy and our endurance. We play hard no matter what’s at stake and no matter how we are feeling, so I think this win came easy for us.

Southerland, who must add some bulk to his 185-pound frame, got more assertive and alert as the game progressed.

“You know it took us a little while to get things going,” explained Hurd. “We play 35 games so you’re not always going to be there for the whole 40 minutes, and a good team could fight through that. I think we saw glimpses of what we can do today. I certainly wouldn’t hang on that as our priced piece of the season.”

Neither did Apex. They were a veritable two-man band with Malcolm Pope Jr. (Marquette, St. John’s showing interest) and Alibaba Odd (St. John’s, St. Bonaventure, Quinnipiac) hitting 11 of the team’s 22 shots. Pope, who took home the game’s Sportsmanship Award, scored 19 points on 5-for-14 shooting. Odd chipped in with 14 points on 6-for-9 shooting.

Thomas Jefferson 59, Long Island Lutheran 55: Derek Klein handed out a game-high nine assists, but he forced a shot in the waning seconds that ultimately cost LI Lutheran the game. With plenty of time on the shot clock, Klein fired an ill-advised trey that was blocked. It wasn’t what Lutheran was looking for during a crucial possession. The vaunted Thomas Jefferson held on for yet another victory.

After Tyler Harris (game-high 23 points) nailed a three from the corner, Lutheran looked as if they could slay a Brooklyn dragon that’s dripping with young talent.

Keith Spellman, a versatile scorer who hit crucial threes and played well beyond his years, scored 21 points and snared 10 rebounds for Jefferson. Spellman, who’s on the recruiting radar of schools such as Rutgers, Virginia Tech, George Mason, St. John’sand Seton Hall for teams looking to add a guard this spring in the class of 2009, had plenty of help with Joel “Air Jamaica” Wright scoring 12 points and ripping down eight boards. Achraf Yocoubou had a strong game for LI-Lutheran with 22 points.

Lutheran, which was without highly sought after 2010 prospect Tobias Harris, who counts Big East schools such as Connecticut, Louisville, Syracuse, Rutgers, Georgetown, Marquette and West Virginia among his colleges of interest, got a much-needed boost from his younger brother.

The aforementioned Tyler Harris knifed through the defense and the southpaw continuously found ways to score. He’s still raw, needs to gain weight and pack on muscle to a spindly 160-pound stringbean frame, but Tyler has all the tools to emerge into a big-time scorer, something Connecticut sees in the fact they have already offered a scholarship. Tyler knows how to free himself up and he can get his shot off in traffic. Tobias Harris is projected to return as early as next week.

Jamesville-DeWitt 75, Lincoln (NYC) 63:If you were lucky enough to score a vacant seat to this one, it didn’t matter by the end of the night.

Only a seat belt could keep fans from jumping out of their bleacher spots at Baruch College’s ARC Arena Saturday night.

Jamesville-Dewitt delivered a stunning upset of nationally-ranked Lincoln, rolling to a convincing 75-63 victory in the final, most anticipated game of the Big Apple Invitational. Both teams busted out the track shoes, in a game that featured a number of quick, momentum-rolling runs and constant transition scoring. In the end, it was undefeated Jamesville-Dewitt that had Lincoln sucking back wind.

Dewitt, the defending class A champions, stamped a resume win on a bigger, more reputable program. They managed to knock off the hunted in Class AA/NYC on a bigger stage, in enemy territory, and roughly five hours from their Syracuse-area home.

Senior guard Alshawn Hymes scored a game-high 28 points in 27 minutes, and J-D negated Lance Stephenson, Lincoln’s vaunted senior guard. Stephenson, widely regarded as the top high school prospect in the nation, was held to just 15 points on 5-for-17 shooting. The 6-foot-6 wunderkind drew double-teams all night and was never able to find his rhythm.

Despite a theatrical layup, a wowing dunk, eight boards, five steals, and four dimes, Stephenson was held in check for most of the night.

In the Railsplitters worst loss of the season, they were outscored by a 25-16 margin in the fourth quarter. DeWitt’s Syracuse-bound guard Brandon Triche was named game MVP. The 6-foot-4 senior was a major presence in the transition game and finished with 20 points and four assists, albeit he committed a game-high nine turnovers. Lincoln hit just 11 of 31 field goals in the second half.

Even worse, James Padgett (13 points, seven rebounds) was outclassed by an underclassman. Freshman Dajuan Coleman, a 6-foot-8 mountain of a man whose name you will want to remember, copped a double-double with 12 points and 10 boards. His poise down the stretch was pivotal.

After back-to-back buckets by Lincoln’s Shaquille Stokes (14 points, 6-for-18 FG) sliced J-D’s lead to 58-57, Coleman scored on a big bucket while getting hacked. Moments later, Triche whipped him a pass from near halfcourt, splitting down the Railsplitters defense as Coleman converted an easy two points.

“It’s unexplainable how good this feels right now,” said Hymes, who had six of J-D’s 48 boards. “We came out and got it done. We came in as underdogs for the first time in a long time. We knew we had to come in here and play against a crowd.”

In the second quarter, that crowd nearly blew the roof off after Stephenson got out on a fast break, cocked back, and unleashed a gravity-defying, earth-scorching one-handed jam. Members of Stephenson’s infamous entourage began shouting “BROOKLYN WE GO HARD!”—the anthem of the new, catchy Jay-Z hit. A home crowd that suddenly ratcheted up the decibel levels allowed the Railsplitters to seize the momentum.

Not for long.

Lincoln trailed throughout the third quarter and J-D took capitalized on another momentum-rush as Lamar Kearse bagged a buzzer-beating three-pointer.

Lincoln’s frustration compounded in the fourth quarter. In a rare off-night, Coney Island’s Abraham Lincoln High School played more like Herbert Hoover or George W. Bush HS.

Self-confidence seemed to snowball for Lincoln, while J-D continued to pour it on. Triche flew out in transition, soaring to the cup for easy lay-ins.

How much emphasis did J-D place on bottling up the hyped to heaven-sent Stephenson?

“We didn’t want to come in and focus on one player,” said Hymes.

“We knew that he was their best player and we had to watch him, but we just made it a team thing.” Added Triche, “(Stephenson’s) a tremendous player. He’s as good as advertised. A player like that, you can’t really stop him. You know, you have to make everything he does tough.”

Nothing came easy for Stephenson in the fourth quarter. The Railsplitters weren’t featuring him. Lincoln sophomore Codian Becker, who scored 14 points and netted four treys, stepped it up in his place. Darwin “Buddah” Ellis, a quick-strike sniper who left the nets burnt at the IS8 tournament in the fall, went 0-for-6.

“I think we could’ve played better as a team,” said a dejected Stephenson. “We weren’t focused for this game.”

Lincoln came out of the gates flat. Back-to-back buckets from Coleman (no relation to former Syracuse and NBA standout Derek Coleman) highlighted a 10-0 run that put them ahead, 11-7. The railsplitters trailed 15-9 at the end of a lackluster first quarter that saw their offense sputter.

It looked like they’d snapped out of the funk in a wild second quarter, but J-D never went away.

Born Ready and Lincoln were supposed to come out with the swagger of a blood-thirsty champion. Dewitt stole that swagger and made them pay, big time.

Extra Points: Dewitt out-rebounded Lincoln, 48-43. Both teams scored 36 points in the paint. Dewitt scored 28 points off turnovers, while Lincoln scored just 12. In second chances, Dewitt outscored Lincoln 15-9. Dewitt’s bench outscored Lincoln’s, 10-4. So, on paper, the boys from upstate throttled Lincoln in every aspect of the game. Dewitt shot 40.6 percent (26-64) to Lincoln’s 37.9 (25-66).

Rice 70, Pine Crest 53: Miami-bound guard Durand Scott scored a game-high 26 points in 26 minutes, and Rice made quick work of their Florida foe. The Florida boys got a taste of the physical, high-horsepower brand of basketball that’s played in New York City. They fell behind by 20 points in the first half and could never climb out of the hole. Scott, who was named game MVP, scored shot 6-for-8 (5-of-7 from three-point land) and converted nine of 12 free throws. He also handed out five assists.

Brandon Knight scored 23 points to pace Pine Crest, a prestigious academic institution. The 6-foot-3 junior guard has received interest from Syracuse and Connecticut as one of the elite point guard prospects in his class. He’s a great student, posting a 4.2 GPA en route to earning the Big Apple Invitational Academic Achievement Award.

Benjamin Cardozo 67, St. Peters 54: The long day of exciting basketball action tipped off with Cardozo out of Queens being led by MVP Reynaldo Walters’ 20 points as they got past Staten Island’s St. Peters.

Be Sociable, Share!

•